


Kill Switch Engaged

by dancinbutterfly, Stucky1980



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Boys In Love, Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Choking, Cohabitation, Collars, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dom Bucky Barnes, Dom/sub, Dominance, Endearments, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Established Relationship, Family Feels, Hopeful Ending, Ignored Safeword, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Kissing, Kneeling, M/M, Memories, Mostly Dead Dove: Maybe Do Not Eat?, Murder Kink, Non-Consensual Violence, Post-HYDRA Problems, Shuri is a Good Friend, Strangulation, Sub Steve Rogers, Submission, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-05-30 20:03:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15103943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stucky1980/pseuds/Stucky1980
Summary: Using counter-Dynamic conditioning to gain the long-term, total compliance required from the Asset was dangerous. It went against human neurochemical biology and caused hormone and toxin build-ups that could be deadly at worst so Hydra found a solution. They gave the Asset a trigger, as it were, that would act as a catalyst for the Domspace release that could alleviate the Asset's Dominant needs when commanded by a handler intentionally or if parameters were otherwise met throughout any periods of use without need for the typical Accordant measures found in a Scene. The one they created was perfect for a weapon.Bucky's a man again now, though. He just wants his brain, his Submissive, and their life back. That last tentacle rapped around his mind may kill him and Steve both before it lets them have have it.After all, what more complete control is there than to take someone's life?





	1. it would have been enough (Dayenu)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kill Switch Engaged - Kneel](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/393353) by Lisa Mott. 



> Inspired by the amazing artwork of the fantastic Lisa Mott. She was such a great support. There is no understating how wonderful she is. This story wouldn't exist without her support and brilliance and talent. 
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> Disclaimer: I do not speak Xhosa. I did the best research I could and just had to wing it with everything else.
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> **HEED THE TAGS! THEY ARE NO JOKE!**
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> If you have questions or concerns about the content feel free to hit me up on tumblr at dancinbutterfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky feels better but there's something rotten in the state of Wakanda (and it's all in his head)

 

So much about Accordance is different in Wakanda. Bucky doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Everything is different in Wakanda, up to and including himself. Yet aside from his own echoing mind, the lack of formal protocols for Accordance Dynamics are what throw him the hardest, clawing at something in his mind that hurts and begs to be reorganized in a way that terrifies him.

He thinks at first that perhaps it’s because no matter where he’s been in the last seventy years, behaviors attributed to biological Dynamic have always fallen into a set of patterns that he knows and could easily observe as Dominance and Submission manifested in the world around him. There was command and obedience, roles set and followed, often an element of ownership be it unilateral or shared that structured the way relationships formed and developed that he could always read as Bucky and was trained to understand even more deeply as the Winter Solider. That isn’t the case in Wakanda.

He doesn’t realize this when he is out by the lake, recovering. Children are his only human interaction and most of them are too young to have identified as a Dynamic although he has his suspicions about a few of them.

It’s not until Shuri brings him to the palace and the causal power of the Dora Milaje triggers echoes of the programming that HYDRA used to override his Dominance with a slightly terrified compulsion to kneel every time he meets one of them, that he truly understands the difference. In every other military he has encountered (and between the ones he’s served in, the one’s he’s infiltrated, and the one’s he’s brought to the ground in flames he’s seen more than his fair share) an indicator of role one’s Accordance Dynamic is always part of the uniform, like rank, unit, and identification. There’d been a D embroidered into his own Army uniform after the name Barnes, he can remember that now. But none of the Dora seemed to have markings of any Dynamic that he could see and he looked.

On the other hand, Nakia, the future queen, works outside of Wakanda and proudly wears the bracelet of a Ugandan Dominant and while the chaos  of Zemo’s attack had been a blur, he remembers that T’Challa had worn one as well. They do not wear them in Wakanda but no one seems the least bit scandalized by the dual Dominant pairing, let alone surprised.

When he asks Shuri why no one is bothered by their relationship, she looks at him like he’s grown a second head to provide an even more dramatic contrast to his missing arm. She’s his guide to the world of the living and makes him feel so very old.

“She’s from a noble family, is a brilliant strategist and politician, and my brother is an embarrassing, pathetic moron for her,” Shuri says, head tilted at him in utter confusion. “Mother could have arranged something and it would be more perfect I suppose? But I don’t see how.”

Saying that marriage was between a Dominant and a Submissive, or maybe a Switch when he was growing up seems like the worst possible thing he could say in response to that. It makes sense, far more sense than the arbitrary rules that governed the world he grew up in. If the king and his fiancee are happy then what do the Accordance rules of some foreign land a seventy years ago matter? And what does it matter that there is something burning under his skin, in his blood, where his Dominance has been locked in its own cage for nearly a century, that screams against these principles? Just because he’s lost and off-balance doesn’t mean that their system isn’t a good one.

Bucky hasn’t Dominated a partner with the Accordance techniques he was raised on with a Submissive since the war, since Steve (at least not that he can remember and now he can remember more things than most people ever experience) He can’t say it in so many words but the truth is that he misses it. The savage desperation that feels like he’s being forced to walk along the edge of a cliff where falling is the worst kind of DomDrop, the kind that leads to darkness and terror and unspeakable pain, the kind of pain that is severed limbs and burning cold and blood on his hands. Almost as much as he misses Steve himself.

Except that he’s Dropped before. He Dropped in Brooklyn when Steve was sick and nothing he could do could help him _breathe, damnit, please breathe for me_. He Dropped in the trenches because everyone in the 107th Dropped at least once - Dom, Sub or Switch and they pulled each other out no matter who they had waiting back on the Homefront because that was war did to a man. He Dropped in that factory in Azzano when Zola made him scream and weep and pray as he clung to the control in his name, rank, and serial; name, rank, and serial; name, rank, and serial. He Dropped in London after he watched Steve stare at Agent Carter in that red dress and felt himself powerless to stop his Steve, his _life_  spinning away from him. He Dropped in the freezing cold in Austria after too many sleepless nights and near-misses when there was nothing between him and Death and Steve and death but luck. He Dropped so often as the Asset that the lows were practically a friend because at least those he could understand, those he could anticipate in a world where everything was so wildly unpredictable that a Dominant’s skin was nearly coming off at all times.

Dropping is despair. It’s loneliness. It’s hopelessness. It’s a feeling of apocalyptic smallness that can only be broken by the gift of Submission, sped along by affection and connection.

He doesn’t have to be so close to Dropping. He could reach out and Steve would run the length of the world to him. He’s already burned it down for him. A trip across it is nothing. He knows that but he cannot ask because this feeling of wrongwrongwrong is not the same as Drop. This is not lit by the sight of people who people who do not bow to T’Challa any more or less than the casual displays of Submission and Dominance in the streets of the Birnin Zana that made up Wakandan Accordance which are a world and lifetime away from force-conditioned comfort of disciplinary collars and leashes on Soviet training facilities in 1958.

This discord flares when he spots Okoye tenderly petting W’Kabi’s face with the back of her hand in a narrow corridor of the palace as he bows at his head and whispers words that Bucky has learned are devotionals and apologies and the Queen Mother calls orders to her attendants and they scramble to obey, the skin of their cheeks flushing at the joy of serving her. He could bring ask and Steve would submit with a similar bliss he sees in them and that edge would become a road. Because he knows, all he would have to do would be to reach out and Steve would come. He would  fall at his feet if he even hinted that he wanted him. Steve would go down, naked and vulnerable, for Bucky in the way he refused to for anyone or anything else in the world, in the universe.

Yet Bucky knows, somehow, the broken pieces inside would not refit themselves at satiation. They would form something dangerous and infinitely more painful than what he was already experiencing.

He knows because when he watches T’Challa and Nakia spar the casual battle for control tugs at that same _something terrible_  inside him that wasn’t there when he was whole. He tracks their movements and intentions, knowing mercy is something both are ready to give but neither will ask for until a true winner emerges and he goes so cold the sting cuts to what bones he still has and turns the metal beneath his skin into knives. They are playful in their war and sometimes, it is not the Black Panther who emerges victorious. Sometimes the War Dog Princess outsmarts him with her sinew and her speed and her smile in much the same way the Widow’s sting brought this king to a standstill in Germany and the way she ground Bucky to a halt in Washington with her thighs and her guns. Regardless of who ends the fight on top, they excuse themselves to run to privacy laughing like children, the safety and happiness in it that makes him feel like his lungs are icing over again and again.

The chaffing inside him was rubbed by everything into screaming, deadly life by everything beautifully and egalitarian different about Wakandan Accordance from his own experiences, not the rigid, practical similarities. And it’s getting louder every day.

Of course, not saying something wasn’t really an option with Shuri. She sees his not-there-frowns and hears the weight to silences that he thinks are no different than his other silences and pokes him, often literally (her nimble fingers jabbing between his ribs and under his navel so much like Steve used to when they were cold and hungry and happy), until he breaks.

It’s so difficult to speak but Bucky tells her because confession to her has lead to repair after repair and something is wrong with the way his brain was responding to things he remembered. Bucky doesn’t tell her the grizzly, filthy specifics. She may be the same age he was the first time he put Steve on his knees, but she is a tenth his age and some things do not need to be shared. He manages to get the point across though.

She puts him in her lab that doesn’t feel like a lab and does scans that don’t feel like scans. She frowns and looks like Becca even though she looks nothing at all like Becca. He thinks it’s because she’s concerned and a generally happy person and maybe because next to him she seems very short. When she comes close enough, he catches her hand and squeezes it in gratitude. Not being able to remember Becca at all is still fresh for him and she doesn’t want him to say thank you again but he is still so fucking thankful.

He missed so many people, so much. She gave them back. If she had only done that and not been a good friend, he would love her for the rest of his life. Dayenu.

Looking at the inside of his head is always a shock. There are still ugly places on his brain. Black places where tissue was cut away and white places where it scarred. She frowns at it and actually calls for assistance and Bucky knows that things are more complicated than the reshuffling and reprogramming required to wipe out the trigger phrases. That must be very complicated indeed.

“Here.” The new doctor had introduced themselves quickly, giving neither Dynamic nor gender and their name is one Bucky’s tongue has trouble wrapping around. They are beautiful with russet skin and umber eyes, their short brown hair braided tightly against their scalp in a practical style that probably fit well under a surgical cap.

They point at a spot on the image of his brain and the 3D hologram zooms in, expands, grows more detailed. “It’s similar to what we see in cases of stimulant and euphoriant addiction.”

That surprises Bucky. He didn’t think they had addicts in Wakanda. It’s so idyllic here that the problems of other nations don’t seem to touch it but Wakandans are human beings, just like everyone else. It makes sense they would have the same weaknesses. The way Shuri nods and pulls up a few things on her own computer tells him they simply handle it differently than other places.

“Intentional, repeated seratonin and dopamine release in response to a very specific stimulation over an extended period, but in the-” the doctor pauses. They pause, looking for the word in English. They say something in Wakandan, rolling vowels and clear clicking sounds flowing quickly between themselves and Shuri.

“Accordant Dynamics.” She says in English finally. “He’s identified as Dominant.” Then she says a few words in Wakandan and the doctor nods.

“Thank you. Intentional and repeated stimulation to the Accordance area of the brain over a long period of time while flooding the brain with dopamine, seratotin, and of course, oxytocin and syncathatine.” They tilt their head ever so slightly to the left. “They were conditioning a pleasure response to something in you, Sgt. Barnes, so intensely it left a visible mark in your neural map.” They shift their dark gaze to his face. “Do you happen to know what it might be?”

Bucky thinks about feeling of lying in the dirt for hours with automatic Soviet rifles equipped with long-range scopes. He thinks about knives with matte-black blades that did not reflect light but slid through bone like a knife through a stick of butter left out overnight in August on the counter of a Brooklyn tenement. He thinks about thin wires stretched between hands covered in leather gloves and the sounds a man made as it wrapped around his neck. He thinks about the wet sound his metal fist made as it landed against Steve’s face over and over and blood dripped from has mouth, fulfilling his mission with a messy death.

“Yeah, I have an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: (if you're familiar with my work, you know I like to do these if I did research or have commentary so here we go) 
>   * The version of New York Jewery you're going to get is coming throug my personal and familial experiences and knowledge of Judaism. Not all Jews practice the same way, believe the same way, live the same way. Do not take this as the end all be all. Experientially, I'm taking a lot from what I heard from my grandparents's stories of growing up in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Yonkers Jewish communities in the 20s, 30s and 40s. Religiously, I'm pulling from my Brooklynite grandparents and my own religious upbringing so there ya go. That's your Jewish background for that fic.
>   * So to that end, the chapter title and the comment "Dayenu" is from a song we sing at Passover. It literally means "It would have been enough." and it's basically in gratitude for all the stuff that was done for us by Hashem in the Exodus story. *cough* Passover references are going to be a theme. 
>   * Accordance literally means to have an agreement. I use that term to describe the formal rules and behaviors for the Dominant and Submissive behaviors in this universe because in a world where people are taking and giving power over to each other on the reg, it seems like reaching an agreement is super important, even if its about as realistic as it is in our world? The amazing XMFC series Bound and Determined by helen78 and Cesare uses the term "concordance" for the same thing and it was their idea first but I wanted this to be something separate and different from that universe, with a different set of rules and principals because that universe has its own laws and is, seriously brilliant but not at all what I'm trying to do. So, welcome to the MCU's world of Accordant Dynamics. It's big and complicated as fuck. IDEK how I got here I really don't.
> 



	2. once, T'challa walked behind a giraffe...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know HYDRA was involved because the answers are worse than the questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Look, there's dead doves in this fic. Don't eat them okay? If you have questions please feel free to hit me up over on my tumblr, same name same spelling. I'll answer any questions you might have. Take care of yourself. Enjoy?

When he was 21, Bucky bought Steve a collar with the idea that he’d ask him to marry him. It stayed an idea though because Steve was a Catholic. His mother would have had a goddamn conniption over it. 

His mother had wanted him to be a rabbi. His father had wanted him to be an accountant. Bucky had wanted to make them proud and not be a shanda and somehow manage to keep all his pieces together and make everyone happy, including himself. Steve was the only never seemed bothered that all he’d ever managed were jobs hauling creates and running errands and doing shift work or that he never popped the question. 

Which wasn’t to say Steve didn’t want things. Steve was greedy, practically desperate in the way he wanted things from everyone, everything, from the whole world and from Bucky more than most. 

Steve wanted to watch him dance and listen to him ramble about the rockets and aliens in Thrilling Adventure Tales, explaining as best he could why they could or couldn’t be possible. Steve wanted to drag him into fights for civil and workers’ and Switch and Submissives’ rights, to defend the dignity and safety of the gender and Dynamic queer fairies who lived in their building, on their street, in their neighborhood, and against every asshole who thought that Steve’s status meant he was less of a man, a powerhouse, an opponent to be reckoned with. Steve wanted to go down soft and sweet on the couch cushions on the living room floor and kneel with his head on Bucky’s thigh and have his hair pet without hurting his back so Bucky could feel in control of his life and Steve could feel safe and protected and neither of them had to fight for fifteen fucking minutes of their goddamn life. He wanted Bucky to work his ass sloppy with Vaseline until he was crying and fuck him until his hole gaped open and wept with a cloudy mix of grease and cum. Steve wanted to follow Bucky’s every direction, quiet for once as he swallowed Bucky’s smooth, cut cock down and fingered Bucky open with his long artists fingers, holding the weight of his heavy, hairy legs over his bony shoulders. Steve wanted to muss Bucky’s carefully styled hair and tie his tie in a gesture of possessive service and walk him to minyan before heading off to whatever ad agency was buying his pictures that week. He wanted to live their little life without compromise. 

The things Steve wanted Bucky to give him were just so easy to deliver. And fuck, if it hadn’t felt so good to make sure Steve got what he wanted too. And Bucky loved him, loved him, loved him so hard he felt like he was dying from it sometimes. Or at least, he thought he was, back before he knew what dying truly felt like. 

But Steve was a goy and while he didn’t have a mother’s heart to break after Sarah died, Bucky did and her heart would be fucking broken if she never got to see him stand under a chupah with his Sub or Switch, more by that than by choosing a man who would never give her grandchildren. She had Becca for that and Steve had understood and never seemed to want to get married anyway.

So Bucky never asked. They never got married but he always wanted to, when Pearl Harbor came and when his draft ticket went. So the collar came with him in his pocket to the European Front and when he fell from the train, it fell with him. He didn’t know to miss it _before_ but since he became a person again, he’s considered where it could have gone often enough. Is Could-Have-Neen-Steve’s Collar in a neatly labeled box in some bunker in Ukraine, cracked and useless with age or was it thrown out with coffee grounds and the remains of his arm to decay into nothing but a silver buckle and D ring buried in last century’s dirt?

Times like now, he wished he had that commitment to lean on. Steve wasn’t bound to him. It would give Bucky an excuse (to himself and his guilt) to reach out to him but Steve isn’t his Collared Submissive, his legal husband and there was no reason Steve should come except that Steve _would_ because he’s Steve. He would and dear God, he really shouldn’t. 

The new trigger they've found, the one that makes him look at other people’s Accordance behaviors and scream wrongwrongwrong, is literally murderous. They poked and prodded it with their strange medical technology that seems less like medicine and more like children’s toys from a high science fiction story and he’d been flooded with a deadly Dominant violence. That was the only way he could explain it. 

The experience is outside of his control in the same way as everything else Hydra had planted was but that was where the similarities ended. It wasn’t blankness like the wipes or mindless counter-Dynamic Submission like the codewords caused. This dark trigger flooded every fiber of Bucky’s being with an anxious need to sate the hungry compulsion to destroy his target. Threaded every instant of desperation and dread was the promise of DomSpace euphoria when he watched the target die and took their total Submission, leaving them with nothing to give anyone else ever again. The demand manifested in him as a singular focus - raw, physical destruction seeking an outlet and it didn’t matter to him how he found it. With his hands, with a gun, a knife, with the clothing the doctors’ were wearing. 

Shuri, standing in front of him the whole time, talking to him the whole while, looks like a perfect target, with her thin, fragile neck and the closest Dora so far away, so far that she would never be able to stop him. The sense memory of crushing the windpipe of another teenage girl маленький, сильная, красивая, паука с короткие черные волосы, она плакала, но не пытаются говорить felt like as it collapsed under his metal fist coupled with the sight of the long, defiant jut of Shuri’s chin has the hot arousal the buzzing promise of Domspace rising in him fast and hot as a grease fire. Nothing in him can stop that and oh, god Bucky wants it, but the parts of him that clawed back some humanity at least manage to start screaming.

It was a good thing he was strapped down with vibranium restraints to a vibranium table or he would have killed someone. There’s no question about that. Standard sedation didn’t work against a tidal wave of supersoldier adrenaline. T’Challa himself had come down to subdue him with his Black Panther strength and precision, as Shuri trusted no one else to do it while Bucky was restrained.

He hasn't been so relieved to fall unconsciousness since his world was a shiny gold bank vault and the men around him were all agents of Hydra. 

At least this time, he wakes to better company. The feeling is gone but he wakes up with a new feeling, a headache so violent that he’s sick all over himself. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out but it's long enough that his mouth is dry with thirst and all he has to give up is bile. It smells foul and he wants to cry, maybe does a little, feeling like a true monster for the first time since Shuri and her team put his brain back together. 

As if conjured by his very thoughts, Shuri at his side in an instant. Her outfit is different, and so is her hair so it's been at least a day if not longer. That's... not good either.

She gives him a smile that is just as bright as ever although he can see tears in them and he thinks, too young. She’s too young to be doing this. 

Then he remembers how young the girls who joined the WAC were, how young some of the women who became Army nurses and drove trucks were. He remember the clever runners for the Resistance movements they met in France and Austria and Italy and were chosen because the war had closed down their grade schools. He thinks about the number of times Steve lied on his application and about boys in his platoon who were sixteen and lied about their age to go to war and thinks that, then again, she’s not so young. 

He doesn’t pull away when she cleans him up with some kind of cloth, though he does marvel a little at the fact that an honest to betsy princess is taking care of him in his sickbed. He wants to laugh but his throat hurts from being choked out however long ago and from throwing up. Instead, he casts his eyes up to the gently lit ceiling and says silently to his mother, may she rest in peace, “Look at me now, ma, I’m just like Prince Charming.”

Shuri notices him not paying attention to him, because Shuri notices everything and slaps him on his left shoulder. It registers as pressure but not pain. She’s very calculated that way. “Don’t ever do that again. You scared me half to death!”

“I’m sorry, princess. It wasn’t my intension.”

“No, I do not imagine it was." She releases his shackles, clearly having been waiting for confirmation that he was himself again. "It's been three days. We got some good readings though. They really messed you up good, those tentacle jerks, playing with your Dynamic responses like that.” She tilts her head at him, a thoughtful little frown creasing her forehead and wrinkling the skin between her eyebrows. “It’s pretty brilliant though. “ She sighs and tosses the cloth she cleaned him up with across the room. It lands with a plop on the floor. Bucky wonders if that was what she was going for. “I hate that.” 

He has no idea if she means what just happened with the mess rag or if she’s talking about Hydra. Shuri is so much smarter than him, she can be hard to follow. Howard Stark had been like that, moving and talking a mile a minute. His hands flew everywhere and his mouth moved faster and his topics jumped even more rapidly. Good sense of humor, great sense of style, even better taste in booze (although where he got it when they were rationed Bucky had always been itching to ask but never dared, he was just a Sergeant, and Steve refused to, kept tumbling something about goddamn fondue, even after Bucky took him to that place in Paris) and the worst taste in Dominants - with the very notable exception of Agent Carter. Compared to Shuri, though, a chat with Howard Stark was a cakewalk. 

Then again, Howard grew up in his century and was an adult and basically from the old neighborhood if a few blocks over and away, which in reality was a whole other world. and although they didn’t never really talked about it, there was that other thing, where Howard had crashed their makeshift seder at the officers’ lodging he and Steve shared the one April they’d all been stationed in London looking awkward with a bottle Manischewitz Concord grape that had tasted so much like home Bucky had actually cried. Steve had smiled and opened the door and hip checked him and said “Hey, let all who are hungry come and eat, right Buck?” None of them commented when Howard pulled his own kipa out of his back pocket but they did make him read the Four Questions even though he was the oldest person in the room. That helped the conversation flow too.

Talking to Shuri is not like that at all.

“You were able to answer our questions, in between the screaming and fighting. It was very helpful. Dr. N’Kiro and I were trying to figure it out how everything works but, long story short, you have a murder hard-on.”

Bucky bangs his head back against the pillow he didn’t even notice his head was on and squeezes his eyes shut. He hates his life. He really, truly does. 

“Don’t worry. We fixed everything else. We can fix this. We just need to find a way.”

He does not want to know what that would be. Because every time he even thinks about putting someone(Steve, Steve on his knees, Steve on his back, Steve wearing a collar around his thin throat in above those terrible ties like Bucky always wanted to see but never actually managed before he shipped out across the Atlantic to this godforsaken hemisphere that’s honestly never done him any favors except for this one tiny country) the call of that violence starts to tickle. He didn’t realize it before but he does now. He knows and nothing’s been so terrifying. He’d take the Chair and Zola and the bleak emptiness of being the Soldier again over knowing himself as Bucky Barnes and needing _this._

When he explains this to Shuri, she beams at him. “Yes! You weren’t exactly explicit but based on all our data, I figured that was going to be a problem for you. That why I called him.”

Ah. Of course. He should have guessed this because Shuri is quite possibly his favorite living person aside from Steve, but she is a meddling meddler who fucking meddles.

“What do you mean you called him.”

“Well, James,” she says patiently pressing here palms together in front of her with an air of patience that is so false it reminds him of those fake teeth bubbe’s used to wear to dinner and those old things was made before the market crashed. “I know outsiders don’t have kimoyo beads but I hear they have do have these things called telephones? In fact, colonizer scientists have even managed to catch up to us enough to make them portable in the last decade. Isn’t that cute?”

“I know you think you’re funny.”

“That is because I am funny. I am hilarious. Now that I’m allowed to post videos, my Youtube channel has 19 million subscribers. They all say so.” She giggles, looking supremely pleased with herself. Even through this, he misses Rebecca so much it hurts. “There’s this one video from when I got T’Challa to walk behind a giraffe-“

“Shuri.” He says her name clearly and carefully and does not wave his hand in her face or clap or or shout or do any of the things he might have done to Steve or Becca or one of the Howlies or Wilson or, shit, Carter if he were wanting to live really dangerously. She is a kid and a fucking Princess and honestly, _tragically_ , his best friend in this century and no, Steve is not his best friend because the love of his goddamn life is in a separate category even with this, ugh, murder hard-on mess going. 

All this work he’s been doing in Wakanda has been to about being more human being and less robot bulldozer of mass destruction and that means civil conversation. He has two years of practice to pull from since Insight Day and every day (well, a lot of the days) since he came out of cryo he has been getting better. He is not going to let this newest catastrophe derail his progress, not that piece of at least. He will not. 

“I need you to tell me exactly what mean you when you say you called Steve?”

“I spoke to him after my team finished secondary analysis of the video records and the brain scans yesterday. I didn’t go into detail or anything. I mean, I’m not technically your doctor but I do have some tact.”

He snorts at that.

She gives him a vicious side eye and continues. “Anyway, you and T’Challa were busy testing his new suit modifications and then you were sleeping, which you need so your brain can continue to heal. Now here you are so I am telling you. Captain Rogers will be here tomorrow so we can start to fix,” she waves a hand at his head. “All of this.”

“Tomorrow?” Bucky repeats horsely. 

He has felt terror before. He remembers the sensation. Terror is the fearful anticipation he lived for an eternity waiting in tiny, concrete rooms, so dark that he could not see his hand in front of his eyes to be dragged out of that small, black into somewhere so bright he was just as blind and where he would hurt. There would be no warning. There would be no pattern to the type of pain. The promise that it would come inevitably as certain as gravity and much more certain than anything else. Nothing outside that horror of anticipating the promise of new pain was real. Things like time and the sun and God - those were gone. 

So this feeling washing over him at the thought of Steve arriving in less than 48 hours? Bucky is clear on the fact that it is not terror. He knows this for a fact. Terror is a sort of apocalypse that Steve is the antidote to. Steve is the opposite of terror. He’s a wave of good things that makes Bucky feel like there are whole things still living and growing in him that matter more than network of weeds that still flourish from the cracks left by small, dark, spaces full of shock and pain where he lived foreverforeverforever until those places became completely nonexistent because who needs to torture an American GI when there is no American GI left anymore?

No, Bucky thinks, what he’s feeling now about Steve’s imminent arrival, this breathless, shaky, nervy sense that everything is going to go horribly wrong, is what he would have _thought_ was terror when he was the dumb kid who wanted to drag Steve under the chuppah and make an honest Sub of him before the war. Now, Bucky he doesn’t know what it really is. It’s not anywhere near as rough as true terror but it’s not fucking great either. The whole thing is just not great to be honest. “As in, tomorrow?”

“Yes. And listen, I know you can’t actually do anything with your hair but at least let us help a little.” She presses her lips together. “That bun, it’s terrible. You look like a college student from the US, and not the kind there to learn. The kind who goes for two years only to drop out and move in with their parents because they can, not because they have to. Do you hear me Sergeant Barnes?” She reaches out and takes his face in her palms before petting his hair. “I am speaking as your friend now. This will not do to meet your Submissive, eh?”

“I can’t believe you’d betray me like this.” Bucky says, even though he does believe it. He really does. It makes sense. No, it does. Becca willed Shuri into existence from seventy years in the past to punish him for the time he took off all her doll’s heads and hid them for a month. And the time he cut her hair while she was sleeping. And the time he told Davie Proctor that she liked him when she asked him not to. And that time he forgot to cover for her and Davie when they stayed out after curfew even though she did it for him and Steve all the time. 

So this is fine. Bucky knows he had this coming. He has brought upon himself eternity of repentance and Princess Shuri for his crimes as the Fist of Hydra and a crappy big brother, respectively. Fair is fair.

That is how ends up spending the next day with Shuri and her friend Yonela treating him as their personal doll. Actually, if he stops and lets himself think about it (which he doesn’t, he really doesn’t) the whole process is a bit like a much softer, nicer, more patient, more style oriented, and consensual version of maintainence. He showers and shaves and the girls put things in his hair that smell better than most things he’s ever eaten and they wave small hand-held machines that glow like cellphones at his head but don’t actually touch him. They finish the process by sitting on either side of him and simultaneously tugging at his hair with a combs that are as dangerous as his knives as they chat. They shove him into a three dozen different outfits from half as many countries with the remaining time before landing on jeans and a navy t-shirt from Gieves and Hawkes and the same and the same pair of boots he arrived in Wakanda in. The whole affair takes about ten solid hours fairly soothing and he’s able to go to that quiet place in his mind where there’s nothing but white noise. The whole process takes about ten straight hours. Bucky couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at the girls when they were done with him. “I thought Wakanda was supposed to have the best everything in the world and you’ve put me in English tailoring?”

Yonela had leveled him with a glare that could have melted sand into glass. “First,” She holds up an elegant index finger. “Those were made in Italy, and second?” Her thumb pops out to join it. He hates Hydra for taking his memories from him and never more so than for making him forget what sixteen year old girls working in teams could be like. “The English may have ruined the outside world but Gieves and Hawkes figured out how to make you white boys look palatable before your patchwork tragedy of a country even existed. We did you favor of the finding these for you when we realized how dire the situation was so you could look presentable for your imbeko, so have a little appreciation for fashion history and be grateful we got you this far. Sun'qhela.”

Bucky wants to shuffle his feet in chagrin but restrains himself. He is the most deadly assassin in a hundred years and he survived the Red Army, Hydra, and fucking Iron Man. A child clicking her tongue at him and frowning may crack him but he’s not going to fall apart completely. 

He’s saving his breakdown for when Steve gets here.

He simply nods. “Well, apologies and thank you, ladies. I really do appreciate it.”

“He was playing, Yolena,” Shuri sighs. “You teased him all day and now you can’t take a joke? So weak, I swear.”

Yolena says something in Xhosa that sounds snappish. Shuri shoots something back that actually involves a cocked back and Bucky decides he doesn’t want to know. However, Yolena sighs and nods and then smiles at him.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Nah, I can take what you dish out.”

“Yes but I shouldn’t if I can’t. Not very sporting is it?” She looks at Shuri who is smiling again. She smiles all the time, a happy girl with a happy life. Bucky thinks he’d kill to keep her that way. “It’s a flaw.”

“We’ve all got’em. Steve could get like that too. He could talk shit about a fella’s hairline and big teeth all day but the second you brought up his height? Bam. Elbow right in the balls.”

Shuri laughs. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

Bucky shrugs. “Maybe a little.”

“And he sounds like a catch,” Yonela adds.

Yeah, Bucky thinks, he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> 
> 
> * We all know that the MCU has made the official language of Wakanda Xhosa. I do not speak Xhosa but I did try to do some research however, for the most part I used Google translate and I want to disclaim that. I have no idea if that is accurate or not and I apologize if it isn't.  
> 
> * Sunq'hela is a Xhosa term I got from the incomparable Trevor Noah, a South African Xhosa/Swiss comedian who grew up in Sowetto, South Africa during Aprtheid and who wrote a ridiculously great book about it called Born A Crime. Oh yeah, he's also the host of the Daily Show. To quote his book _Sun’qhela is a phrase with many shades of meaning. It says 'don’t undermine me,' 'don’t underestimate me,' and 'just try me.' It’s a command and a threat, all at once. It’s a common thing for Xhosa parents to say to their kids. Any time I heard it I knew it meant the conversation was over, and if I uttered another word I was in for a hiding—what we call a spanking_ and is just such a magical turn of phrase I couldn't not use it when writing in Wakanda.
>   
> 
> * Gieves and Hawke really has been around longer than the United States. It was founded in 1771 but they really also just sell jeans and t-shirts. IDK either yall. 
>   
> 
> * The Widow candidate that Bucky killed was [Marina](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Marina_\(Red_Room\)_\(Earth-616\)) who was Natalia's friend inside the Red Room in the comics. It didn't end well for her there either.


	3. yet another "not yet"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve arrives in Wakanda and that doesnt make anything any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soft chapter is soft. 
> 
> BETA'd CHAPTER IS BETA'D! Thank you to Liv for the clean up of all the existing chapters and those to come. 
> 
> As always heed the warnings and read with your self-care in mind.

Yonela puts his hair up in a bun so tight his eyes water less than five minutes before Steve touches down because “You won’t stop touching it. It makes you look nervous.”

Shuri grins like a mad woman. “He is nervous.” She’s right. He’s definitely nervous.”

Yonela nods in agreement even as she brushed it back and up. “But you want to present yourself when you see him for the first time right? You give yourself away when you fidget like that. This is better.”

Personally he’s glad he can fidget at all. A couple years ago the concept of fidgeting was as alien to the machine he’d been as making casual conversation with a princess and her best friend was to the boy he’d been growing up.

“If you ladies say I’m ready for my debut then I’ll trust your judgement.”

Yonela tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear and kisses his cheek. Bucky stands very still as her lips brush his skin. It’s almost nothing but he’s been trained to sense the almost-nothings and this one means everything. He smiles at her with his heart in his throat and manages to choke out a thank you before she adjusts his bun one last time and excuses herself.

Shuri’s fiddling with her kimoyo beads as her friend disappears. Bucky has a bracelet with three kimoyo beads of his own so far - his Prime bead, a communication bead that he’s gotten the same hang of has any smartphone and another one that he’s been reliably informed is better than any terminal interface on any Western computer.

Shuri and the doctors connect to his Prime bead for everything. The damn thing has his whole life stored on it somehow.

Bucky has only ever had much use for the communication bead so far and only when someone in the Golden Family calls him first. So he’s still surprised whenever one of them lights up for him, which it does as the princess waves her hand through the air. Incoming message.

“They’ve landed,” she says and shit, there’s a ship landing outside the palace projected in the air between them from his bracelet. “To maintain all possible controls, we will be sending Captain Rogers to you here. You may watch his approach through this feed or turn it off and do it the old fashion way.” She tips her head to the side. “As we discussed, the biological monitors on your kimoyo beads are in place, with Captain Rogers will be given the same. We have both your baselines so you will not be interrupted or otherwise observed unless a critical vitals are noted or you specifically request it. That still the plan?”

Bucky nods and swallows. He touches the bead and turns off the hologram. If he sees Steve get off that plane he may chicken out of this. It’s already too much. He’s got to do this like shoving a dislocated socket into place or rebreaking a badly-set bone, with one terrified shove into harsh inevitability.

“That’s the plan.”

“Good. You’re all set. And don’t worry if it goes pear-shaped, eh?” She squeezes his right arm gently as she passes him to leave. “We can always switch things up. Okoye says all wise soldiers know no plan survive first contact with the enemy but that is no reason not to have one. So no matter what happens, at least you’re moving forward.”

That is the least comforting thing I have ever heard, Bucky thinks. She gives him a thumbs up as the pattern door slides shut behind her. He doesn’t call out after her even though he kind of wants to because honestly, he is afraid of what else she might say.

Not that the quiet is better. He’s alone in a cool, softly-lit room that would be called a lounge by anyone with lower stress but, considering how ungenerous Bucky is feeling, reminds him of a cell what with the lack of windows and the waiting. He remembers things like cells now, how they all had waiting and artificial light in common. It’s one of the downsides of having everything back. He got pacing back too. The Asset could hold position for days, weeks. As a Howlie, he could hold a spot in a nest for hours. Now he’s falling apart over the space of less than five minutes. Four. Three. Two. One.

The door slides open again and Steve walks in with the same thunder and lightning stomps that used to make Sarah Rogers snap at him to “Be careful on the floor, Steven, we’ve got neighbors down there.” He doesn’t think sound travels down through the stories in the vibranium palace and he wouldn’t tell him to stop anyway. He looks well fed if tired, more tired even than Bucky and good except for the way he’s staring at Bucky like his heart is about to fall out of his eyes and, well…

“What is that on your face?”

Steve sputters. “What?”

“This.” He steps forward and catches the side of Steve’s cheek, rubbing his hand through the thick fur he finds there. “If you’re out there playing cowboys and outlaws without me, Steve, the least you could do is come back more like the Duke than Gabby Hayes.”

Steve turns pink under the beard. It’s the same shade his chest would flush when Bucky pushed his soft limits by keeping him on all fours in the apartment for a week or his lap, in nothing but his braces and slacks in a bar owned by a friend of a friend of Steve’s art school classmates, uptown Manhattan eyes who had money and could bribe all the right cops.

“We’re supposed to be undercover. It didn’t seem important.”

“It’s not.” Bucky turns his hand so that the back of his fingers are ruffling the hair on his cheek. “It looks good on you.”

 

“You look-“ Steve breaks off and steps in, wrapping himself around Bucky like moss around a tree. “Bucky, God. God.” Bucky can’t do anything but cling back. He doesn’t know how long they hang onto each other. Time stopped having much value to him when he fell off a mountainside and it’s meaningless to him now.

He has Steve in his arms again. Until that changes, this is the only moment that matters.

~*~*~

Having Steve with him doesn’t mean catching up for Bucky. Steve really only has one way of looking backwards and that’s nostalgically. Anything that took place after Berlin when they weren’t together that wasn’t Bucky’s recovery might as well not have happened. For him, there’s only picking up where they left off, meaning the winter of 1945. Of course, things were different then, what with there being a fucking war on and all.

Bucky’s more of a realist. He’s always been that way. That is not where they are now. Bucky’s living slow now, slower than he ever has before - no job to get to, no rallies to attend to keep Steve out of jail at, no services to attend on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. For him, picking up where they left off means getting Steve his Prime kimoyo bead and making sure he understands the most basic faux pas that Bucky’s already fucked up here and that under no circumstances is Steve going to be kneeling for him in private.

“But that’s why I’m here.” Steve says, confused looking around his rooms. He hadn’t liked that either, having his own rooms. Living together was another part of picking up where they left off.

To be honest, Bucky didn’t like that either. But, the Domspace euphoria and the pleasure as the violence rose in him is too close the surface. He thinks it might have been there since he came out of cryo in D.C., in Russia, in every incarnation of his Winter Soldier self since the conditioning was implanted. He just didn’t know what it was.

Now he does and he’s afraid of what having Steve this close could unleash. The mental images alone call up visions of slow kills that leave him shaking and hard. He doesn’t say that but he refuses to share a bed and a room with him either.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sounded that simple when Shuri explained it, Buck.”

“It’s- Jesus, Steve. Can’t I just enjoy your company for a minute before you make things difficult?”

Steve grins at him, his smile even brighter than Bucky remembers in that ridiculous beard. It’s growing on him. “I always make things difficult for you.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“I think you like that about me.”

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. “Rogers, it’s been half a day.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, crossing the room to hook the middle and index fingers of both hands into the belt loops of the jeans Yonela and Shuri had insisted on. Guess they’d been right about the outfit after all. “Half a day of peace for the first time in lifetime and you haven’t kissed me yet.”

He should pull away. He should jerk back. He doesn’t do that. He just stands there, still and awkward but he somehow manages not to let Steve kiss him either. “You said Shuri explained it to you.”

“She said your trigger was Accordance-based. Basic contact doesn’t have to involve any Dynamic or follow Accordance behaviors.”

“This isn’t like the words.”

“Buck-”

“Steve. This isn’t like the words, okay? You came to help me fix it but we’re not risking without her and T’Challa and all her doctors and scientists to tell us how.”

Steve’s shoulders sag just a little. He doesn’t take defeat easy but he gave up fighting about this somewhere over Siberia about a year ago. “That’s not the only reason I came.”

“Why I let you come then.”

“Please, Bucky, I-“

“Not yet, okay? I just- not yet.”

Bucky’s been saying that to Steve, out loud or with his intentions, their entire relationship. _I’ll collar you but not yet. I’ll marry you, but not yet. I’ll come back to you from the war, but not yet. I’ll tell you what happened in that Hydra factory, but not yet. I’ll come back to you from hiding in myself, but not yet. I’ll be with you again when I’m better, but not yet._ He’s never followed through on any of them.

He’s never intended to be a liar. Really. He’s meant every fucking one of those promises when he made them. He’s just failed all of them so far. God, but he wants to make them true, let them become promises that end in ‘now’.

This is where he has to start. With this last trigger. “Shuri said we would start tomorrow. She has some kind of plan. We can wait until tomorrow.”

“We’ve been apart long enough. It’s fucking ridiculous, Buck.” He drags a hand through his hair and looks away. Bucky can see his eyes are bright anyway. “It’s not fair.”

“Yeah, I know pal.” He drags his hands over his face because his own eyes sting a little too. He misses when Steve, the both concept and reality of him, didn’t hurt. “I know.”

Steve’s shoulders slump in the sort of defeat Bucky’s wholly unaccustomed to seeing on him. It’s just not something Steve does. Then again, he also knows it’s only temporary.

“Look, I know you say tomorrow is when they’re going to start work disabling your kill switch but-”

That startles a laugh out of him because 100 years on this planet and that pun has to be in the lowest taste of anything he’s ever heard and he got back seventy years worth of Hydra handler comments in 5 languages. “Kill switch? Really? Is that actually what they’re calling it?”

Oh, and there’s his Steve, all stubbornly defiant thrust out chest and gallows humor grin. “That’s what I’m calling it.”

He laughs again and it feels so fucking good. “Sweetheart, you are such an asshole.”

Steve’s eyes go dark and the tension in his body leeches away a bit as his head tips back showing just a hint of throat at the endearment. Bucky curses his weakness, letting slip the one endearment that was always saved for their Scenes.

He and Steve never liked terms in Acts of Accordance that framed Submissives in terms of pets, possessions (hates that even more now that he’s been one), something degrading, or as Steve liked to put it _any words that imply that being a woman makes someone inherently Sub Dynamic. We know plenty'a swell Dom dames and besides_ (and this bit Steve usually said with his hand wrapped around his cock which was almost bigger than he was, more than a mouthful, that Bucky liked to order him to fuck his face with at just the right speed, one tap on his thigh to speed up, two to slow down, three for just right - just like Goldilocks) _I ain't a woman, am I, Buck?_ Sweetheart was what he was to Bucky, only going sweet for him and the whole of his heart.

He closes his eyes. If he looks at Steve’s throat or eyes or shoulders too long he’s going to start thinking about how easily he could stop his heart. This is why he just can’t.

“Steve.”

“Please, Buck-“

“You should go.”

“We’re in my room.”

“I should then.” He makes for the door, long strides eating up the intricately patterned rugs, made with the same complex and beautiful skill of all Wakandan fabric and he’s almost out when Steve catches him, his vice grip catching hold of the weapon. It takes everything in him not to strike, all the deprogramming and rehabilitation months of care and counseling and open skies and quiet have given him the ability to stop that impulse that rolls from the contact through his body faster than thought, faster than light. He’s only able to stop because it’s _Steve_.

Steve doesn’t let go.

Bucky wants to order him to take his hand off him, to back away, to just stop, stop all together. Steve might obey. It had worked sometimes - when Steve got into fights, a few times during the war when the Howlies were too outnumbered even for Captain America and needed to retreat. It’s a last resort though and not something he wants to do now that they’re new. Instead he grits out, “I need you not to do that again,” through teeth clenched.

“I’m sorry. Just, hey, can I- It’s been forever, “ He licks his lips and ducks his head, just a little chin tipped down in the opposite of the stubborn jut he thrust at the rest of the world. The gesture makes Bucky hungry. “Buck. Please.”

He wants to let Steve kneel. He does. He wants to let him go down, put him under so deep he forgets what year it is and how they’ve changed but he can’t risk Steve. Not when they’re so close.

They’re of a height now so he does the next best thing. He wraps his palm around the back of Steve’s neck and pulls him close. It’s a poor excuse for a collar but it’s something, enough for Steve to sag into himself as Bucky presses a kiss to his hairline, then his brow then on both eyelids before rubbing his nose against the side of Steve’s. He mumbles an exhausted thank you and Bucky fucking hates himself, that this is enough for Steve to be grateful.

“I’m sorry.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, breathing slowly in through his mouth like he used to when he was somewhere between Subspace and an asthma attack. Bucky wants to squeeze his neck again but he can’t drop him any further.

“Sweetheart, I need to leave.”

“Tomorrow.” Steve says. “We fix this tomorrow.”

Bucky doesn’t split hairs over how hard this is going to be. “Tomorrow,” he agrees, because he can’t let Steve have him. So he lets Steve have this instead. It’s a poor substitute and when he leaves, he thinks they both know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
>   * Check out the original sized art that Lisa made for this chapter [right here](https://i.imgur.com/gAFg4Qv.jpg). It's an amazing drawing that should be seen at full-size but which is too big too be seen on this page. 
>   * Even if you think you don't know who Gabby Hayes is? You know who Gabby Hayes is. He was the ultimate grizzled mountainy bar fly in westerns films on whom all others are molded 
> 
> See? We all know that guy or a version of him. 
> 
>   * All Steve does is make life difficult for Bucky Barnes. This essay will explore... 
> 



	4. staten island rapid transit railway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky talk things out before they do some stupid things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soft chapter is a soft

The room that Dr. N’Kiro’s team has put together for the deprogramming efforts is not so much a hospital room or a laboratory as a very lavish rumpus room. There’s a thick mat of some kind of thick, soft fabric that his feet sink almost an inch deep into over large patches off the floor. A large mattress like a futon covered in furs lay on the floor furthest from the single door. The natural light makes the room look soft and welcoming as Dr. N’Kiro sticks the same coin-sized neuro-trackers they used for his initial brain mapping on his skull. 

They’ve already placed on his neck small self-adhesive tranquilizers pads in three places, the microneedles poised to deploy in a hundredth of a second. Dora Milaje specializing in distance weapons waits in various tactical positions, ready to move and has been placed since before he arrived. These steps went a long way to easy his nerves. Independently, the tranqs and Dora alone could bring down a rhino. He’s seen both. He thinks that means they can take him if they need to. 

Everything Shuri and Dr. N’Kiro’s team have come up with since the discovery of his kill switch (and he’ll kill Steve for coming up with that clever little term, the shit, because now everyone is using it - not just the med/tech team either, he heard one of the Dora refer to the Wakandan translation) is, to paraphrase the sort of supervillain bullshit Zola spouted at him for twenty fucking years, elegant in its simplicity. Brilliant and obvious, not that Bucky expected anything else. Shuri and Dr. N’Kiro spell it out, very clearly and simply. 

He and Steve were going to Scene to completion, with heroic measures waiting in the wings, as many times as the medical team needed to get their read. And again for whatever was required to turn the switch to a permanent off. Steve, they assure him, already agreed with them that it was the best and safest method to get readings on the kill switch and begin desensitization. Steve’s cells regenerate in a way no other humans do and he’s already survived death once before - in the ice and again, when he drowned in the Potomac before Bucky could scream up through the Soldier to perform the CPR he’d been taught to care of his handlers. So what’s a few more times with the serum mending the damage, especially if Wakandan medicine was there to lend a hand?

Bucky grimaced at them and quoted one of Shuri’s memes back at her. “Thanks. I hate it.” 

“Everything will be fine. It’s very lucky, you know, that if you had to have this kill switch that Captain Rogers is your partner. This isn’t something we could do with anyone else you know.”

“This was Steve’s idea, wasn’t it?” It sounded like the kind of thing Steve would come up with, letting himself get killed over and over for the sake of their sex life was just so…Steve.

“Hey,” she holds out her hands so that her pale palms are facing him. “I’m going to be watching the monitors. I don’t need to know what the two of you are into.”

She’s joking to try and make him feel better, he knows. It’s just so unfunny that Bucky wants to throw himself off another cliff. The inappropriateness of having this conversation with her falls far enough into second place to how much he doesn’t want to do this, it barely even registers.

“Dr. N’Kiro’s doing Captain Rogers’s having a medical briefing,” is her non-answer. Fine. He’ll find out on his own before this all goes to hell. Again. “He has his own set of safety parameters, procedures, separate from yours. All you need to do is take care of yourself.” She touches one of the transmitters hidden in the long loose fall of his hair. “Try and remember that you’ve been safe with us. On my father’s grave, no matter what happens, you will both still be safe now.”

He resists leaning into her touch. She’s a powerful Dominant in her own right, stronger than he is, stronger Peggy Carter was, possibly stronger than King T’Challa. There’s enough counter-Dynamic conditioning left behind for him to want to sink into that contact, hunt for the pseudo-Space that he found in Submission that was something like meditative calm and the oblivion of self. 

He resists the unconscious force behind touch because it’s unhealthy, the way that obliteration wipes out all the good, all the positives, turns him into a hollow puppet that doesn’t even feel compelled to reply unless ordered. He’s not that thing anymore. He doesn’t have to bend in ways that break him. He can appreciate Shuri’s affection without succumbing to her Dominance because of the healing he’s received. It’s why he’s trusting her and Dr. N’Kiro and their colleagues with the kill switch. He just hates that he needs to.

She watches him sway into then out of contact before she pulls her hand away on her own. Her constant smile is a little strained but still sincere. “All you have to do now be with each other and let things happen naturally so we can fix this problem like we fixed everything else, alright?”

Bucky nods. That’s all he can manage. For her part, Shuri takes the opportunity to excuse herself before things can get anymore awkward and awful than they already are. 

When Steve joins him half an hour later, he’s in khaki trousers and a long-sleeved sweater a few shades darker than the brown of his beard. His feet are bare. Bucky’s hypnotized by the sight of them, realizing with a shock that even though he’s seen Steve’s feet since the serum, of course he has, he’s never had a moment to look. The last time was at war. No time for gawking there. Every second’s intimacy was rushed for the most they could get. Steve’s feet look like they can hold the weight of his personality now than those fallen arches and weak ankles had been able to, driving home somehow more than anything else how different things are more than anything else has managed to.

“Buck?”

Steve has been talking to him. Of course he has. His sweetheart is chatty when he’s nervous, or angry, or horny, or really anything but way down in Subspace. He’s got a mouth like nobody Bucky’s ever met (except for that one guy, the Canadian independent contractor from the Patassé mission in the CAR who had Rumlow calling Pierce screaming ,“Never the fuck again, sir. All do fucking respect, I’ll fucking walk, I’ll take all of STRIKE with me and I’ll fucking burn Saskatchewan to the goddamn ground!”).

“What?”

Steve scratches his beard and smiles. “There you are. Hey.”

“Hi.” He looks amused now. “You okay?”

“Dandy. Just dandy. How about you? Feeling more suicidally stupid than usual? Wanna blow something up while you’re poking bears and playing mad scientist again? Really round out the morning.”

Pink flushes Steve at a land-speed record. Bucky likes the look of it even if he’s unimpressed with the reason. So their briefings were similar then.

“Unbelievable, Steve. I’m not-“

“Yeah. Let’s not,” Steve says, cutting him off. “Let’s do something else instead.”

“Oh, and what do you propose?”

“Kiss me.” It’s a plea, not that actually Steve says please. Sarah Rogers may have raised him right but Bucky never gets to see those manners himself outside of a formal Scene. “Kiss me blind and put me down and we’ll make the best of this until we can’t anymore. It’s what we’ve always done, Buck. Dig through a whole lot of nothing and find something in it just for us.”

Bucky is tired of fighting him. He’s the Dom in this but Steve spent years pontificating at him about the power of Submissives in relationships and Scenes and Bucky’s never once argued with him. Steve has a hold over him, always have. He sighs and pushes his hair back with both hands before holding his right out to Steve palm up. “Alright then, sweetheart. C’mere.”

Watching Steve obey is almost as good as kissing him, the first since a cold morning in March almost a century ago, aching and wet and everything that is good and right in the world made up of lips and tongue and teeth and a hand in his hair, cradling the back of his skull and breath in his mouth. Steve always liked kissing, put work into being good at it, giving and taking and letting Bucky lead when he was such an aggressive little shit who wanted to take control of everything all the time when he wasn’t under and that hadn’t changed. He was still a beautiful kisser, his whole focus in the moment, trying to talk without words into saying with his touching and tasting what he wasn’t so good at with words. 

Bucky heard him. Silent or screaming, he’d always heard Steve, even when he couldn’t hear himself. 

“This is such a bad idea,” he gasps when they break for air. That has Steve chuckling against his lips and Bucky grins back because yeah, they were a pair a match and a matchbox together, looking for trash to set on fire at any given moment. 

Trust them to help, Shuri had said. Trust. Bucky wasn’t so good at trust anymore but he once trusted easily - his mother and father, Becca, his rabbi, and the guys at work and the Howlies and Peggy and, sometimes, when he was shit scared or very tired or in a good mood, God. And Steve. He always trusted Steve. 

So he would trust the Golden Family. He would trust the tranquilizers and Okoye and her Dora to stop him if he needed to be stopped. He could just be for right now and know that the consequences were required to move forward.

He kisses Steve again, quick and closed-mouthed, for himself this time, and breathes in deep. “Okay. Staten Island still our word?”

Steve lets out a startled bark of laughter, looking pleased and horrified at once. “Yeah Buck. Because if we’re in Staten Island-” he begins.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Bucky finishes. He remembers the time they did go to Staten Island by mistake when they were in sixth grade. They’d been messing around on the trains, gone uptown to Penn Station after school let out and made a tactical error in a game of where Bucky was It and ended up on an SIRT express until they stopped, caught up in the mess of construction that was the perpetual railroad stop-and-start expansion and were forced to walk more than ten miles. They had only gotten grounded a week each because they were both so worn out from the walk that their mothers seemed to think that was punishment enough. 

The memory sings between them. They’re still on the same page.

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Okay, sweetheart. Then let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
>   * I would like to apologize for my failure to articulate the beauty of Wakandan architecture and design and all other non-imagined architecture and design you may ever encounter in my work. If you want good architecture, I recommend Ben Aaronovich's Rivers of London series but if you want some twisty D/s feels, stick around. 
>   * Central African Republic(CAR) is a country that was colonized by the french and proceeded to fuck up beyond all reason (as they did and continue to do). It's also one of - if not THE - poorest country in the world even though it is mineral rich and has a decent amount of good farmland too. Unsurprisingly, there have been a high number of coups, revolts, regimes, autocrats and other political disasters as happens in the wake of colonialism and exploitation. In 2003, the current leader President Patassé (who was the first democratically elected leader of the country but who also apparently was Losing It) was ousted by General François Bozizé - which set off a 4 year long civil war that relapsed again 5 years ago, complete with ethnic cleansing. Why didn't we hear about it? Because well, cobalt - which we need for computers - comes out of central Africa and no one who is making money of it wants to talk about that. Plus, they did talk about it - in France. Also, because Darfur was happening at the same time and was a much more dramatic human rights abuse situation. 
>   * Why did STRIKE, the Asset, and Wade Wilson, independent contract killer, go there to help Bozizé? Well - HYDRA's ~thing~ is sowing civil discord and perpetuating war and working towards their own ends. Stirring shit up in a place that has cobalt, uranium, gold, diamonds, and a bunch of natural reasources to export seems like their jam. 
>   * There an ENTIRE fic in here that will never get written. It involves a very angry Rumlow, a very confused Asset, and a very bored Wade who just wants the Asset to laugh at his jokes. For instance, Wade thinks its HILARIOUS that he calls Rumlow various nicknames based on rum including but not limited to Captain Morgan, Malibu Spiced, Bacardi Breeze, Sailor Jerry, Rum Raisin, Pina Colada, Jack Sparrow's Preciousssss, and when he's working with Rollins - Rum and Pop (because [apparently residents of Saskatchewan and Canada in general have reported to PopVsSoda.com that they call carbonated beverages with sugar in them pop](http://popvssoda.com/statistics/SK.html) and Wade Wilson is repping for Regina.) 
>   * The Staten Island Rapid Transit Railway was under construction starting in the 20s because of the order to electrify the railroads and then expansion to connect with the Brooklyn and Manhattan lines. That shit went on through the war. It was, no lie, a construction mess for 20 years. I dont live in NYC but Atlanta's been under construction the whole 10 years I've lived here so...I can't even imagine how much worse that must have been. 
> 



	5. flipping siwtches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they do something stupid to find out what's wrong with Bucky's brain. it feels really good until it all goes to shit. then it feels better, until it's the worst it's ever been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: DEAD DOVES EVERYWHERE! READ WITH CARE! I AM NOT KIDDING!
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>  **HOVER TO READ DETAILED WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS**   
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Captain America was an icon during the war. Tall, broad, handsome, in command. There was no official statement of course but the world took but he was a Dom’s Dom who charged into battle and took over every situation he encountered. The SSR took five hundred pounds of fight out of the hundred pound bag Steve was born with but it’s not like two-fifty could hold it much better. Considering all things the way the newsreels caught about Steve, Bucky could see how the world got the impression they did.

Nobody but him ever saw this. No one else got to see blue of Steve’s eyes almost swallowed up by the black of his pupils as hunger overwhelmed him, his shoulders rolling forward instead of back in anticipation of obedience, his mouth falling open in anticipation. This belonged to him. He owned this version of Steve, even without a collar or a marriage certificate. Steve gave it to him and he was so fucking proud to have it.

It’s been forever since he’s felt proud. He forgot that piece of this, how much of his pride was tied up Accordance for him. He was trusting him and going down for him and obeying him, hell listening to him at all when he wouldn’t hear shit from anyone else. He took pride in the fact that he was good enough for a fella who found dissatisfaction in pretty much everything else about the world - the government, the economy, the lack of manners between people in the neighborhood, his own body. It was its own kind of accomplishment, knowing that Steve trusted him, went down for him, obeyed him, 

That rush of pride the fills him now as Steve looks at him, patient in a way he never, ever is anywhere else not even on mission. Separate from the hardness growing in his jeans, he feels that odd soft-hurt feeling that he’s become familiar during his time in Wakanda as another piece of himself returns to try and slot itself back together with the rest of the jigsaw puzzle of himself. 

Remembering Steve is easier. Remembering Steve is safer. Remembering Steve gives him a place to start that he doesn’t have in himself even with his memory more like solid wood and less like cheesecloth so he does something he knows Steve would like.

He pulls off his shirt and tosses it away to Steve’s sharp inhalation. Steve was always about skin contact. “Sweetheart, get comfortable and then kneel for me,” he points at the ground in front of his feet. “Here. You’ve thirty seconds. I’ll start counting at 10.” 

Steve grins at him like an utter looney-toon. Bucky hoped he would. They used to do this at the end of long days when Bucky’s back hurt or when Steve had spent all day job hunting and come back with nothing. The countdown gave them time to get centered and a little last flexibility before things got rigid.

He gets to eight before Steve is on the ground at his feet, naked. It’s a sloppy kneel, informal with his hands ready to grab, knees wide spread wide for balance and back arched so far back to gaze upward instead of the compact, contained, restraint formal Accordance positions call for. He can’t have that. Steve used to get off on being able perform perfect Accordance positions despite his crooked spine and bad knee and skinny arms and a host of other problems. It was a point of honor.

“You losing your knack there, sweetheart.” 

“Buck-” Steve’s hand reaches up to grab the hem of his pants in a defiant move that would’ve gotten his sweetheart a backhand if they were in a Scene back in their shabby little apartment. 

He drops an arm and tangles his hand into Steve’s hair. It’s the left hand, the one he always used for punishments; it was weaker. He stops himself from pulling, ripping him off the ground, but something moves inside his head, dark and thick, like fog moving over water. He rubs his head with his other hand trying to push it away and he doesn’t let go of Steve’s head by it’s a near thing. It’s all so close.

He takes another deep breath and chances the grip to a caress, through dirty blond. He hopes Steve doesn’t notice when he switches hands to grip his chin punishingly, so hard it would have been bruising on his old body.

“Did I say you could talk? Move? I don’t think I did.”

He watches Steve’s Adam’s apple bob. It’s a hell of a sight. He can almost feel what it’s like wrapped around his cock, fuck. 

“Sweetheart, show me Supplicant,” he orders. 

He doesn’t let go of Steve’s face.

Steve moves fast and fluid. His heels come together under his gorgeous ass, knees pressing together to lift him up. His fingers twine together, elbows resting on his thick hairy thighs, perfectly positioned to be bound. He tries to arch his back, to look up further, but he can only manage so much with Bucky holding his face. He’s perfect.

“That’s my sweetheart,” Bucky whispers, feeling tears burning the back of his throat. “You obey so good. I’m so fucking lucky.”

Steve’s eyes shine at him. He can see how badly he wants to say something. He can see him resist and he knows it’s hard. It makes Steve’s surrender so much better.

“Stay still,” he commands and Steve does. “Just be still for me. You can do it. I know it’s hard. Always has been for you.” When he goes to brush Steve’s hair back away from his face, he doesn’t know who’s shaking harder. “You’ve always felt like if you don’t keep moving you’ll drown but sweetheart, you’re not a shark. You can stop sometimes. That won’t be the thing to take you out. So just be still and breathe. Relax,” he pulls him forward until Steve’s forehead rests against the skin of his stomach. “And breathe for me, sweetheart.”

Steve obeys. He relaxes. He breathes. He doesn’t move, not even to sigh or nuzzle down against Bucky’s erection like he used to in moments like this.

Bucky can feel himself smile at the feeling. There’s the softness of love always and the burn of arousal at the feeling and the sight of Steve on his knees and against him, breathing hot and wet, but there’s the buzz of power in him too, that’s giving him that floaty feeling that he knows means DomSpace is right around the corner. 

He’s taken control. He’s in charge of this moment. The world around him is a few ripples from the calmness of a glass sea.

“Undo my fly,” he says softly. “You can make noise but don’t speak. Don’t lift your head.”

Steve makes a happy noise. His right hand comes up to touch the zipper. 

There’s nothing remarkable about it. Yet the press of gentle contact, the almost ineffable flip of the zipper tag from locked to open coalesces the fog into a solid unstoppable tidal wave of take, have, _control_ that pours from his hands in rough force that is made of death.

He grabs Steve’s neck because it’s right there. It belongs in the weapon’s grip, is the ultimate way to take Dominance. He can feel blood rushing through his veins, feel air expand his trachea and starts to squeeze but Steve grabs his arm and breaks his hold.

"Staten Island," Steve says, naked and shaking and ready to fight like one of those Greek soldiers they read about in school, the ones Bucky could never get him to draw no matter how nice he asked. 

Steve has always been a solid fighter but between the serum, training with Peggy and whatever he's learned with the Avengers he's like nothing Bucky's ever encountered before. He's a force of nature or he would be if he weren't pulling his punches.

When he hits Bucky hard in the chest, he falls back but he doesn't go far. It's like Insight Day all over again. Steve can't bring himself to hurt Bucky when he knows he's in there and Bucky can't stop. He can't go anywhere because he's caught in the pull of his need, staring through the haze, the craving across the room at Steve.

“Bucky, come on. Staten Island. Don’t do this. You can snap out of this. Staten Island.”

I can’t, he wants to say. He charges instead, throwing a punch that Steve catches. I can’t get out. He brings up his knee and slams into the soft vulnerability of Steve’s cock. He goes down hard. 

“Buck.”

 _I can’t make it stop,_ he thinks as wraps both hands around that pale, lovely neck. _I want to. I want to stop. I love you, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._ The blood vessels under his fingers are bursting leaving ugly bruises the shape of his fingers and he’s hard, god he’s so hard. He hates it and he wants it and the DomSpace bubble is closing in on him like a soft cloud of heaven. He wants to die too, wants to die because he doesn’t deserve to live if he can do this to Steve. “I’m sorry.”

“S’okay,” Tears are streaming from Steve’s eyes and his lips are going pale. He looks horrible. All Bucky wants to do is stop this but his hands won’t listen. They won’t release for horrifically long moments until his eyes drift shut but he can still feel a pulse under his fingers. When that fades away too, his body releases. His hands let go of Steve, yes, but he comes too, startlingly hard, and he floats into the high of DomSpace. 

Bucky is a sobbing mess, shaking and vibrating and hating himself curled over Steve’s newly-dead body. He’s lost in grief and sensation and doesn’t even realize that Dr. N’Kiro’s bursts into the room with a full medical team until they’re pushing him away from Steve. 

“Steve. Please, I don’t-”

“Don’t make us put you down, Sgt. Barnes,” says a smooth voice from above him. He looks up and finds Okoye standing over him. She looks pitying. He deserves that. He’s fucking pitiful.

He turns back to find Dr. N’Kiro doing…something. He doesn’t know what but there is blue light and electricity. Suddenly Steve’s whole body spasms, once, then Steve lets out a desperate, almost sobbing gasp before coughing like his lungs are trying to crawl up his throat. He keeps coughing, pushing himself up, to cough harder and then chokes out a reedy, “Fuck.” He rubs his throat and looks over at Bucky. “So, guess we can pretty much establish I’m still not into breathplay, huh?”

Bucky cries, ugly and guttural and with his whole fucking soul. He sobs desperately into his knees and he prays, for the first time in almost a century, mumbling a tired shehekianu. Everything else he can manage to get out are fairly incoherent. It’s mostly mumbled whispers of “Please” and “Sorry” and “Steve” that is packed with meaning that hovers between the two of them with the weight of decades. 

Shuri moves them to the bed for the rest of the day. It keeps them off their feet, gives Steve his modesty back while still allowing the doctors and technicians the easy access of blankets. It also keeps them in proximity of each other. Bucky can't get away from Steve when he's on the same mattress as him, which, despite having been dead by Bucky's hand not that long ago, Steve actually seems pleased by.

Bucky can wrap his brain around Steve's eternal understanding, barely, but his heart can't handle it. He isn't ready to let Steve touch him, not yet. Steve isn’t happy about that but he is still here. He’s alive. That’s everything. 

And from the soft conversation Bucky’s steadfastly ignoring, this horror show actually accomplished something, provided readings that will help Dr. N’Kiro and Shuri take the kill switch out of his head so he won’t do this again, will never have to hurt Steve or anyone else again. 

Bucky looks at the dark ugly bruises on Steve’s neck as he nods along to the science mumbo-jumbo being discussed and hates himself. It’s not the collar he wanted to give Steve. He didn’t want another goddamn kill on his hands, Steve’s death least of anyone. He seems content though, relaxed if tired and uncomfortable. 

It’s shitty, but Bucky’s two options are to never see Steve again or go along with this. He’d be fine (or rather, he’d cope) with never seeing Steve again but the man chased him across the world. That won’t stand. He knows it won’t. 

So he’s going to have to trust Steve on this one. He can’t trust himself. Being in control isn’t going to help anything here. There are worse people to put his faith in than Captain America and Princess Shuri of Wakanda. Really, no matter how awful things get (and they’re pretty fucking awful right now, with fresh blood on his hands), there’s no one Bucky can rely on more than Steve. 

It’s an act of supreme will to reach across the gulf between them to touch Steve’s hand, the fingertips of his right hand brushing the back of Steve’s left. The contact pulls Steve’s attention away from the conversation instantly though, his eyes, still bloodshot from suffocating, are hopeful but cautious as they study his face. 

Bucky waits because his decisions have caused Steve enough pain today. When Steve turns his hand over, palm up, Bucky laces their fingers together. For the first time since their safe word failed, Steve smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
>   * The fullsize drawings by Lisa Mott are way too big to fit in the story. Check out the [Kneel drawing](http://i.imgur.com/PqQLM3I.jpg) which inspired was the original work submitted to the fest which inspired the fic and the [Choking drawing](https://i.imgur.com/rFHfFRz.jpg)which she drew based on the concept! Leave a comment about how beautiful her work is. Seriously the detail is ridiculous. How do people make their hands work like that?! I DONT KNOW!! 
>   * We all know ancient Greeks were obsessed with naked men and did stuff like have the Olympics naked right and invented gymnasiums just to oggle each other and all that jazz? We're all big pervs here and know that they were all about oily boys? I assume we do, what with it being on the required curriculum for the last 500 odd years in the Western world for some reason (cismen are so weird you guys) but I just wanna make sure we all know what Bucky's talking bout. 
>   * Listen this isn't like...how to kink safely or anything, obviously, but breathplay is no joke. Don't play around with it. Do your research before you even consider it. Don't do it with anything other than your hand. I'm serious. And if someone who seriously suggests tape or a bag or anything? That person is dangerously ignorant or just flat out dangerous and I encourage you to run, not walk. Please be safe. This is a work of total fiction about something comicbook Nazis came up with. I do not endorse these practices in any way.
>   * So...I have no long it would really take to choke out a supersoldier. The human brain starts to die after six minutes without oxygen. I imagine it's longer than that for them. It just seems like a very long time and I imagine it's a terrible way to die. Don't strangle people to death kids. 
>   * To that end, I really do think that Steve would bounce back. I was a little confused by the comic Civil War storyline, but like...the guy recovered to a bullet to the brain if I recall correctly? I'm pretty sure he'd come back from oxygen deprivation, especially with Wakandan medicine. I mean, T'Challa was a popsikitty and they got him back. 
>   * So, the Shehekianu which can be spelled lots of ways because Hebrew and English dont have a 1-to-1 translation but I spell it this way, [bite me wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shehecheyanu), is a super basic prayer of thanks. If you wanted to translate it into modern English (and take out the language that is praising god for the sake of praising god without the implication of gratitude or request that is very big in Judaism) would basically say "Thank you creator and ruler of the universe for keeping me alive and functioning long enough for whatever just happened to happen." I am not kidding, that is the entire thing. It's a catch all. If something's going well in your life, and you're Jewish, and you're glad you (and yours) didn't die before it happened? You say a shehekianu. If you're grateful? You say a shehekianu. If you avoided something really bad? you say a shehekianu. It's an all-purpose prayer to send into the universe when things are better than they could have been or could have been worse. I say "a" rather than "the" because even though it is a proper noun and an official prayer the way Hail Mary is in Catholicism, its also used so much that it's own gesture. You say the Shehekianu as an official prayer during festivals and ceremonies but when you need it, you say a shehekianu and Bucky needed it after that mishagas. I think you get me. (Yente the Matchmaker voice) Right? Of course 'right'.
> 



	6. reverse bang claim and story art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My artist is a boss. Lookit. Lookit this stuff. Leave a comment on this chapter and tell them how boss they are. Seriously. I cant even. I cannot. Even.

Art by @lisamott9/Stucky1980

  
[Claim 164](http://i.imgur.com/PqQLM3I.jpg)(link to fullsize image)

  
[Caressing](https://i.imgur.com/gAFg4Qv.jpg)(link to full size image)

  
[Choking](https://i.imgur.com/rFHfFRz.jpg)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a pun on the band name Killswitch Engage. Because I'm terrible. Sorry not sorry /o\  
> 


End file.
